


Reclamation

by Say_Jay



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 05:37:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21351109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Say_Jay/pseuds/Say_Jay
Summary: Each step closer to the village is one more fight left behind.On nights like these, Kakashi feels a trail manifesting leap by leap, miles and miles of bone and muscle and blood and voices all grabbing at his ankles as he does the one thing he’d never been able to train out of him:Run.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka
Comments: 28
Kudos: 220





	Reclamation

**Author's Note:**

> After many, many years of reading Kakashi fanfics, I’ve decided to finally give in and have a try at it myself. It was a lot of fun and a great challenge to write this. I am very excited to continue writing kakairu, kakagai, and kakayama in the future (for those of you who know me as that BNHA writer, don’t worry I’ll still write EM).  
As with most of my fics, this is very sad, but I promise there will be happiness by the end. Hang in there. 
> 
> Check me out here:  
[My BNHA Tumblr ](https://fucking-zawa-sensei.tumblr.com)  
[My Naruto Tumblr ](https://another-kakashi-blog.tumblr.com)  
[My Twitter](https://twitter.com/Make_my_Jay)

To anyone else, they might call this silence. 

For Kakashi, the rustling of the tree leaves, the rush of wind passing by his face, the constant, endless pounding of his pulse, mimics the sound of waves crashing into breaker rocks. It’s akin to the crackle of thunder as the lightning leaves the ground, returning back to the clouds. 

It’s missions like these that make him feel alive. 

More than that, it’s missions like these that make him feel untethered, haunting, as if he’s floating above his own body, desperately out of control of his own limbs, watching them move without him, soaring from tree branch to tree branch with all his muscles pulling him back to Konoha. 

It’s missions like these that make him feel like there’s nothing holding him down, nothing keeping him here, like one wrong step would send him catapulting into the night sky’s embrace, leaving no remains for hunter nins to burn.

He’d leave no secrets behind. 

These nights bring a heavy burden, bring reminders that life is nothing but a body, too easily taken by another hand, that each breath, each moment is so easily wasted. 

Missions like these make him feel invincible, untouchable. 

Missions like these make him feel terrified.

Petrified. 

Horrified. 

Barely human. 

He’d lie down on a hundred kunai for Konoha, had certainly already taken that many at various times throughout his long life as a shinobi, but lately he was starting to feel like there had to be something else. 

Konoha wasn’t enough to bring him home on nights like this. 

The air he sucks into his lungs feels sharp, stinging with the late night chill that has already settled over his worn muscles. 

Each footfall, the bounce back of the wood beneath his sandals, manages to ground him only slightly. 

Half his mind is focused on the gates he knows he is closing in on, once a beacon, large doors that signified a job well done, a mission complete, but anymore felt like a hiatus, a small pause in a journey elsewhere. 

The other half is still lingering behind him, running through every move, every kill. His sharingan, as usual, had recorded it all, adding to an endless loop of jutsu and gore and blood. 

He tried, here and there, to supplement it with other things. 

Occasionally lifting his headband to take in the sight of the river flowing through Konoha, as he leaned against the side of the bridge, watching as dragonflies landed on the small rocks, little droplets of water falling off their feet as they rose up again, taking flight.

Even this had backfired on more than one occasion, though. 

Happy memories had soured. 

Fallen friends’ smiling faces now passed quickly in his mind’s eye, some more violently than others, replaced with their last moments, gasped out final requests, promises, and pleas for a life already lost. 

Every jounin carried a bingo book, a burden that only seemed to increase in weight with each new entry, and sometimes, even more so when the pages were torn out.

It meant different things for different shinobi, a list of people to avoid, flea on sight, or a list of targets, people to hunt down. Some ninja seemed to use it as a leaderboard, wanting to add page after page to their own entries, while challenging themselves to take down their competition. 

For Kakashi, it was a list of people coming for him, chasing him, always right behind him every hour of every day. It was a reason not to trust a single face he saw on his travels, a reason not to let anyone close. 

Everyone he knew was at risk, all fodder for a fire that sometimes felt far out of his control.

The book had never felt heavier than it did the day it had been slid across the godaime’s desk, his former pupil’s name now prominently featured. 

Team 7 had been one of the few things that disrupted the replay of death after death, but now, Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, their laughter, their pranks, their teasing, all melted away. Replaced with a Konoha headband, deep cut through the middle. Replaced with a small, broken, bloodied blond body limp in his arms as he carried it home. Replaced with a set of green eyes glazed over with tears, and then a fierce determination that Kakashi knew too well. 

He’d been there.

He’d chased those ghosts. 

He’d trained himself raw like they all were now. He’d worked himself to exhaustion, until sleep was something he fell into in more ways than one, just to get the memories to quiet for a moment. 

Except the sharingan didn’t allow that, never had, never will. 

So each step closer to the village is one more fight left behind. 

On nights like these, he feels a trail manifesting leap by leap, miles and miles of bone and muscle and blood and voices all grabbing at his ankles as he does the one thing he’d never been able to train out of him:

_ Run.  _

The bingo book was a burden, but Kakashi sometimes felt like he had something far heftier stored beneath his skin, a catalogue of lives stolen and lost and never returned. 

Survivor’s guilt was an inevitable part of being a shinobi, they’d been taught this early on. 

They just hadn’t been taught how to deal with it, and as Kakashi got older, he was starting to realize that was because no one knew how.

Every day was a lesson in living.

In the distance, something rustles, but Kakashi’s instincts are running at full throttle and even over the post-battle haze of unwanted memories and recordings resurfaced by his childhood friend’s gift, Kakashi can easily attribute that particular kind of twig snapping to a small animal. 

_ Probably a field mouse _ , his mind supplies. 

Sometimes, being a ninja felt an awful lot like coming up for air only to find that the surface of the water has been frozen over.

The suspicion, the paranoia, it never really faded away. Kakashi could fall back into a casual, relaxed slouch all he wanted, but there was never a moment where he wasn’t keeping tabs on any movement in his limited peripheral vision. Even more so, his ears were tuned to every sound in the village, always waiting, always expecting something out of place.

Like the unsettling stillness right before the explosive release of summoning smoke that occurred all those years ago, before the blistering sound of shrill screams and the rush of adrenaline reached Kakashi. 

The better your senses were, the warier you were, the higher chance of survival.

The village needed him. 

The sole of his shoe slips just slightly on the next branch and his pulse triples as he glances back at the wood. 

He sees blood, not much, not enough to affect his footing. 

As he hits the next branch, another shock of instability jolts through his leg. He looks down at his body, taking stock, something he really should have done after the battle was over, but he’d been too caught up in ghosts to notice anything out of place. 

He was leaving a small trail of blood behind him. His skin begins to prickle and his eyes narrow at the crimson drop plummeting down from his chest, watching it fall and vanish behind him, gone before it hits the ground, as he continues to race through the forest. 

This was a genin level mistake. 

A tail of breadcrumbs that would get you killed, every time, without fail. 

Survival was imperative. 

Dying meant Konoha lost one of its best protectors. 

More than that, dying meant failure to uphold his responsibilities. 

Naruto could tell everyone he’d bring Sasuke back over and over, and all his classmates could believe him, that’s fine, they were young. 

Kakashi saw the way any lingering jounins’ mouths turned down at the edges when they overhead these words. 

These kids didn’t have the experience Kakashi did, that the other jounin and ANBU did. Their generation hadn’t lived through war, they hadn’t seen the in-fighting among the elders and clans, they only knew the destruction second-hand, as people they never got to meet and things they never got to see, lost before their time. 

They didn’t know how powerful revenge could make a person. 

Kakashi did. 

Sasuke may still be a child himself, but there was always a fierce shadow consuming the boy.

He’d never admit it, not out loud, but after their fight on the hospital rooftop, a chilling wave of reality he’d always dreaded came crashing down over Kakashi’s shoulders that night. With the village decimated by Orochimaru’s attack, he’d hardly had time to have many thoughts beyond  _ complete the mission _ , as one after another they piled up. Exhaustion was becoming the norm, both physically and mentally. Still, the alarming chirp of the his jutsu, perhaps foolishly passed down to the surviving Uchiha boy, and the unsettling swirl of chakra just centimeters from his hand as it had wrapped around Naruto’s wrist, were a constant presence in his psyche between accepted mission scrolls. 

He’d never forget it, didn’t need the sharingan to keep the memory sealed tight in his mind. 

The first night after their fight, he’d found cover in a small crevice tucked into a cliffside after completing his mission, taking a small reprieve to regain some strength before returning back to the village, still not fully recovered from Itachi’s attack. A heavy weight settled in his stomach as he accepted the inevitable. 

One day he’d have to kill Sasuke. 

That had become all the more clear after he’d abandoned the village and forsaken Konoha. 

Some part of Kakashi still wanted to believe Naruto, still wanted to see that there was another option for Sasuke, that he hadn’t been wrong to try and steer him back toward team 7, away from Itachi, away from Orochimaru, away from the false solitude of vengeance. 

Kakashi was a realist, though. 

Those fleeting hopes were hard to hold onto.

Instead, he tried to fool himself into thinking he could have the strength to do what the sandaime failed to.

Kakashi closes his eye, briefly, slowing down his pace. He tries to quiet the roiling thoughts in his head and focus his attention outward, to the environment. He was rapidly approaching Konoha, probably no more than an hour outside the gates, but far too many gutsy ambushes had taught him never to assume he wasn’t being followed. 

When he could hear nothing but the ordinary sounds of night, and more reassuringly, the flap of bat wings, the rustling of field mice, and hum of crickets, he was fairly certain his trail wasn’t going to be a problem this time. Even if it were, with how many ninja were being sent on missions lately, there seemed to be a constant stream of them going in and out of the village. Kakashi wouldn’t be hard pressed to find backup should a fight begin. 

The hokage and elders might be concerned with keeping up appearances, not letting the other villages know they’d been reduced in number, but Kakashi wasn’t entirely sure this was a preferable strategy. 

He’d been making a lot of mistakes lately, and he’d seen just as many worn out faces, fresh bandages already bloodied, leaving as he returned. 

At this rate, they’d lose more people. 

It wasn’t his job to question the hokage, even if he felt a bit more comfortable doing that now that Tsunade was in charge. They’d always had a bit of a rapport going before she’d taken the title. His sensei being taught by one of the sannin, and his own prodigal status, had made the lines between the usual awe and respect the rest of the village showed the ninja legends and the casual, almost familial relationship he’d grown accustomed to with them a bit tricky to navigate. He’d certainly changed since childhood, but Kakashi still sought rules and formalities, knew his own rank came with an unwanted burden of politics and dignitaries. 

His words held more weight than most of his other jounin colleagues, but he tried not to abuse that power. 

Kakashi picks up speed again, pressing a hand to the darkest spot on his vest, hoping it will decrease the amount of blood falling. He still barely feels whatever injury is underneath the thick padding. Apparently the high he was riding tonight was fairly strong. 

That meant it would be all the worse when he came down, fully grounded back in reality.

That was a problem for later. 

For now, there was the pull of the village, the promise of a brief relief. 

Some shinobi might feel safety inside the walls, let their guard down. Kakashi certainly feels like he has a better chance of neutralizing a threat in Konoha than outside of it, but safety is a false comfort. 

Safety is something children feel in their parents’ arms. 

Safety is…

Briefly, a memory flashes across his eyes, edges foggy, not quite focused. He hears voices speaking hushed, quickly above him. Someone with chestnut hair leans toward him and he begs his vision to focus, but all he can remember with clarity is their soft touch against his cheek, the way their thumb brushes over his eyelid before gently coaxing it closed. He’d obeyed without question. He’d listened, falling into sleep peacefully, because he’d felt…

Kakashi stumbles, his last leap not quite long enough, his foot barely brushing the branch, his body dropping quickly. He reaches both arms out, digging his fingers into the bark and yanking. His chest smacks into the thick limb, but he manages to pull himself up. Once stable, he crouches down for a moment, breathing quickly. He holds his hand tighter against his wound, the sudden rush of pain hurling him back to reality. 

When he peels his hand away, it’s dark red from the tip of his longest finger to his wrist. 

He has to stop daydreaming, has to stay focused.

At this point, he is the biggest threat to himself. 

The remainder of the trip he disciplines his wondering mind, forcing it to watch each step carefully. This becomes a little easier when the gates are within his line of vision. Other shinobi nod at him as they pass by, or just before they body flicker who knows how far away. One of the younger ninja he passes, just as he’s stepping through the gates, gives him a concerning once over, frowning. 

They can’t be much older than Naruto, but they also can’t be sent out alone like this without being at least a chunin. 

This time, Kakashi is the one who gives them a nod, acknowledging them, hoping, as they bow in return, that this one makes it back in one piece. 

He waves at the nightshift guards, not bothering to stop and sign-in as protocol dictates. They knew who he was. They’d sign him in for him. He hears the scratch of pen against paper confirming it. 

He should probably be turning toward the hospital, he knew better than this. He was a notorious patient, finding himself inside the walls so often now that he’d started noticing they always placed him in the same room. 

Alarmingly, that meant they always saved a room for him. He had an assigned room. In the hospital. He very badly wanted that habit to stop. 

He also seemed to have a specific team of medics working on him, recognizing their faces even when the sedatives and pain killers started flooding his system. This wasn’t quite as unusual, there were levels of medi-nins. Standard doctors for civilians, chunin level medics, jounin level medics, ANBU level medics who, like their counterparts, also hid their identity and were sworn to secrecy. Then...well...it had been hard not to notice that Tsunade and a specific, hand selected team of high level, specialty medics seemed to comprise Kakashi’s healers. 

Even when he came in for a quick procedure, something he couldn’t treat at home, a few stitches for a back wound or an antidote for a low level poison, they still unnecessarily called one of the advanced members of his team, despite any civilian doctor being capable of healing minor wounds. He found it concerning that they seemed to be taking just as much care with his body as they would with the hokage’s. 

He knew what that meant. 

He dreaded the day Tsunade stepped down and he, inevitably, stepped up. 

Kakashi disliked the hospital, but he wasn’t a fool. His life was important and he wouldn’t risk it. People seemed to think he was the type to fight anyone who dragged him through those doors, because on occasion, he had, but what they didn’t know was that those incidents occurred not because he was stubborn. 

They occurred because he was, for lack of a better term, feral. 

It happened, usually only to jounin or ANBU, but it could happen to anyone. Weak. Poisoned. Coming out of a genjutsu. Your mind confused and disoriented, incapable of placing where you are, sometimes even who you are. With strangers’ hands grabbing you, holding you down, how else were they supposed to react?

Perhaps Kakashi had, had more of these incidents than most, but he didn’t think that should earn him the label of  _ bad patient _ . 

He couldn’t blame them, though, most of the nurses and medics in the hospital never dealt with him directly. They just knew he got whisked off to some room in the back where they didn’t have clearance to go, and usually camped out for a week or more. 

Still not quite clear, it was hard to assess whether his current injuries would be a quick fix or a long stay, but now that he was walking through the houses, the call of his bedroom was far too great. Besides, with the way the sharingan was wrenching up old ghosts, he was much better off being alone tonight. 

High level medics or not, each time he’d truly lost control in those sterile walls had filled him with a lasting guilt. A few medics had been swapped out of his team over the years. He never asked why, but it always seemed to happen after one of the incidents where he’d had trouble bringing back memories of how he’d made it to the hospital in the first place. 

The only person he ever asked was Tsunade, when she came to check in, give him the run down on his condition, and only ever when everyone else had left. 

All he wanted to know was if they were alive. 

Thankfully, her answer had always been yes. 

Tonight, he has enough sense left not to risk it. He can make it back home and patch up what he needs to. 

One day, her answer would be no.

Kakashi wants to prevent that for as long as possible.

Later, he thinks. Mission reports, cleaning up his uniform, talking to the hokage, restocking weapons, stitching wounds, getting bandaged, it could all wait. 

Like so much else, he’d worry about it later. 

\---

The closer he gets to the apartment, the more his body’s natural sedative seems to be wearing off. He can feel the exhaustion setting in fast. The wards protecting his residence are meant to be able to be unlocked with a minimal amount of chakra, but still requiring a high level knowledge of sealing jutsu and yin and yang release.

He’d had a rather embarrassing incident where he’d had too little chakra left in his reserves to unlock his apartment, the attempt leaving him too depleted to drag himself to the hospital and sitting with his back against his door looking like he’d misplaced his key. 

Truly, that would have been a good excuse, he’d also lost his key a few times on missions, but his mind hadn’t been able to come up with anything clever when his neighbor, another jounin, raised a brow as they exited their apartment packed with equipment for their next assignment. Kakashi hadn’t been able to do much more than stare up at them with a pout, begging with his eyes until they came over and offered to help, listening carefully as Kakashi walked them through the hand seals. 

He’d been more than a little frustrated to have to start over on his wards after that. 

Now, he is immensely thankful. He hadn’t quite realized how low on chakra he was, hardly paying attention on his trip home. Apparently he’d been subconsciously steadying himself with more of it than he usually would as he leapt from tree to tree. He knew he was going to be low, but not this low. The small amount it takes to get through the door leaves him wincing and breathless. 

_ Maa, looks like I’ll be going to the hospital tomorrow after all _ , he sighs internally. 

He closes the door behind him, sending a bit more of his chakra to the tips of his fingers and tapping the wood over where the hidden seal’s activation point resided. 

The entranceway is dark and the hallway even more so. There’s no light from the kitchen or living room spilling into it and while he knows, logically, this makes perfect sense, the hairs on his arm stand at attention regardless. 

He scans the hall and the rooms beyond it with both eyes, his very core aching with the drain of chakra. No matter how briefly he had the sharingan open, every little drop was precious to his body after how much he'd spent tonight. Feeling a bit of his paranoia ebb, he carefully bends down to pull off his sandals, setting them next to the other pair there. He is cautious not to let the shoes touch, the sandals beside his so much cleaner, less scuffed, the soles not yet worn down so far, the color still fairly even throughout, rather than covered in thick layers of various stains from nameless bodies. 

He briefly thinks it's about time he got new ones, he knew many other jounin who went to the uniform dispensary on a near monthly basis to pick up a new shirt or gloves or flak jacket. Kakashi had spent years breaking these in, though, and they moved and fit as if they were part of his skin. He couldn't afford to go backwards, couldn't lose a second in battle to shoes that didn't fit quite right. 

Every movement was practiced and perfected in his mind before executed. If he miscalculated, if his movements were just slightly slower than anticipated, then the kunai grazing his jugular would cut more than the fabric of his mask as anticipated. 

He could afford new shoes, but in other ways, he couldn't.

Kakashi steps out of the genkan and into the hall. His body lists to the left a little and he finds his hand reaching out, steadying himself against the wall. The closer he inches toward the bathroom, the more exhaustion seemed to seep in. At this point, he was changing his trajectory, shuffling toward the bedroom instead. Washing up could wait, he thinks, ignoring the pull of dried blood on his shirt where it is stuck to whichever wound had started clotting already. He has a suspicion that whatever had been dripping continuously the whole trip home was going to require a good bit of clean up, but his limbs are feeling too heavy for anything requiring fine motor skills right now. Lifting his hand away from the wall enough to get past the opening of the kitchen is hard enough. 

He pauses halfway to the bedroom door, letting his full weight press into the wall. He closes his eye, rubbing at it with the back of his knuckle. Sometimes it ached just as much as the sharingan, overworked, overcompensating for his blind spot and modified depth perception. No matter how many years it had been, he still got headaches, still often felt like his eye was begging to be shut even when he was wide awake. 

The longer he lets the eye rest, the more his heart rate increases. He's probably only had it shut a few seconds and he's already shoving away from the wall with a familiar burst of adrenaline threatening to push through his veins.

He opens his eye and looks back toward the bathroom.

Rest didn't seem entirely plausible right now, as much as his body might want it. His mind was always the one dictating his decisions, even when it wasn't thinking straight.

Tonight, like every night, it would win. 

The lights are a harsh fluorescent that has him rubbing at his eye again as he shuts the door behind himself. He steps over to the shower, pulling back the curtain and turning on the water. He didn’t dare soak in the tub, knowing full well that would end in nothing but him waking up in the water, if he was lucky, sometime tomorrow. 

If he was unlucky…

Kakashi groans, dragging his hand down his face. This was the worst part, taking off all the layers, facing whatever new scars were forming over countless old. 

He removes his headband first. While the process is physically the most painless, the harsh clink of the metal plate against the sink counter is deafening to his ears. He runs his finger along the fabric before flipping it over so the Konoha leaf is facing him. 

Taking it off was easy, but also incredibly hard. 

He sighs, eye flicking to the corner of the mirror, seeing that it has already started to fog up. 

_ Good _ . 

He didn’t dare look any further than that. 

He unzips his flak jacket, dropping it onto the floor, something he’s sure he’ll regret once he has to step over it later. He can see now there’s a large slit his shirt, horizontal, across his lower stomach. Seeing the damage clears the fog a bit more, allowing him to remember his battle that night. It was a lethal cut, had it gone further, an attempt to gut your opponent in one strong sweep of your katana, but Kakashi had faced this particular attack many times. He’d only had to worry about his insides becoming outsides once. 

Truly, the hardest part about getting his shirt off isn’t the pull on his abdomen, but the effort it takes to lift the garment over his arms and the mask over his head before he drops it onto the growing pile of clothes. His limbs feel less numb and stiffer now instead. Showering was going to be difficult. This was going to be more of a rinse down than any kind of real washing. 

He eyes the side of the tub, thinking maybe he is at the age where he should see about getting one of those ones you can step into. 

_ You’re in your twenties, Kakashi _ , he reprimands himself. 

He looks back down to his chest, assessing the damage. There’s some bruising along his collar and right below his left ribs, again, two incapacitating jabs he’d managed to reduce to more minor injuries. He’s glad he had enough space behind him to redirect the elbow meant for his jugular. His opponent had been tremendous at taijutsu after Kakashi had disarmed them of their main weapon, and he’d sent more than a few silent thank you’s in Gai’s direction for all their matches that left him with enough experience to take his enemy down. 

He’d been a little less lucky with the stomach wound. The slash wasn’t as deep as it was aimed to be, but it wasn’t pretty to look at. The edges of the gash were thankfully a nice, clean cut from the finely sharpened katana, but it had dug through a few layers of muscle. The small amount of healing chakra he’d pushed into the wound right after battle, his body running on autopilot, had done well enough to slow down the bleeding, but cleaning it up, and by the angry pink color spreading around the area it needed to be cleaned up, would surely start the bleeding in vigor again. 

Tugging off his pants and underwear is fairly painless, though it does require steadying himself against the sink as he kicks his feet free. Completely nude, still gripping the counter top, damp with a light mist from the shower’s steam, he lets his head lift slowly to stare into the mirror. 

It’s mostly fogged now. He can only barely make out the shape of his blurred face.

He takes a few deep breaths before releasing his tight hold and stepping up to the shower. He pulls the curtain back, corner of his mouth twitching at the noise the little metal rings make as they skid across the rod. With a hand against the tiled wall, he carefully, slowly gets in, making sure to keep his back toward the spray of hot water, protecting his injured front. 

It feels good. The steam fills his lungs and breathing feels a bit easier. His muscles relax as the warmth spreads throughout them. He tips his head back, allowing the water to soak his silver hair, cascade down his temples and over his closed eyes, washing away the clammy feeling of many days’ worth of sweat coating his skin. 

It’s good.

So good. 

He takes a deeper breath. His hand, still against the wall, begins sliding down, before falling off the surface completely. It swings limply, fingertips brushing his upper thigh. The sensation feels so far away, as if it hardly even belonged to him.

He knows he needs to be careful, needs to stop his mind from listing away again, but the energy around him feels different from before. 

There’s something soft and comforting about the places it is wandering now. 

He doesn’t want to resist and he’s far too tired to fight anything anymore, let alone himself. 

His breathing sounds far away, almost like the ghost of an ocean wave. 

Abruptly, a shiver runs down his spine. He frowns. 

His body tilts to the left. 

The water starts to feel like pin pricks pressing into his skin in rapid succession. 

All his senses heighten at once, but his mind is still hazy, floating far away, his eyes still closed, and it leaves him reeling. 

His fingers twitch at his sides. His mouth falls open, but he can’t hear himself breathing anymore. 

“Kashi.”

The word violently thrusts him into a different time, to soft rays of light blazing through open doors, to the sweet smell of long grass and wildflowers, to his hands, smaller, rounder, weaker, grasping silver strands of hair so much longer than his own, tugging, laughing. There’s a steady weight wrapped around him, holding him tight. 

“Kashi.”

The walls are moving, swirling as he’s spun around, his eyes barely able to focus, the bright glow from the sun outside giving everything a hazy blur. The laughter ebbs and flows in a way that makes his heart race and plummet all at once. 

“Kashi.”

Then it’s gone. The sliding doors shut, locked into their tracks. The shutters all closed, the shadows all stretched far and wide, consuming everything, everyone inside. 

“Kakashi!”

His stomach lurches and he’s not sure if it’s happening in the past or present. 

His hands are still so small, so useless, as he looks down at them, fastened to his sides, balled into fists, unmoving. 

His whole body is unmoving, statue still. 

Blood seeps into the cracks between the wooden floor boards, but there’s so much of it, it hardly matters. The river still surges toward him anyway, licks at his toes with the same harsh sting as the fire jutsu he’d been practicing at the academy. 

He’d heard some civilians gossiping once, saying how they were all far too young to be learning something like that. 

Not a second after the proclamation had left their mouth, someone else had chimed in, said,  _ War doesn’t care about children.  _

Kakashi’s hands had followed the seals he’d memorized again, the heat of the jutsu he’d produced erasing the small bumps blossoming along his forearms. 

Staring at his father’s corpse, blood covering his feet, the words echoed in his mind. 

_ War doesn’t care about children.  _

He’d been trained to kill.

No one had told him how to save a life. 

“Kaka-Kakashi, dammit, KA-”

It’s the harsh, cold surface of the shower tiles that bring him back, as his forehead smacks against it. His shoulder and knee sting and it takes him more than a few disorienting seconds to realize he’s collapsed, now a mess of limbs curled against the wall, the water still beating down on him from above. 

It takes him an even longer moment to realize he’s gasping, breaths coming out in harsh rasps, chest rising and falling rapidly. 

The last thing he realizes is he’s got the sharingan open, and by now the headache he’d had the whole trip home was starting to feel like someone had copied his raikiri and was now using it to destroy the back of his skull. 

It only takes him a few seconds to stop panicking, close his eye, and regulate his breathing, something he’d done over and over again in the field, when depriving your lungs of the oxygen it begged for was preferable to an enemy with heightened senses hearing you inhale. Still, it’s too much time spent with it open, and he finds himself turning just enough to lean his back against the smooth fiberglass, sinking lower into the tub rather than trying to fight his way back to standing. 

He briefly thinks he’s going to end up passing out here, that tomorrow he’ll be found-

“Kakashi?”

His eye snaps open again, darting wildly to his side, to whatever new threat had followed him home. 

“Kashi...close your eye,” the voice says softly, gently, as the vague shape of a body steps closer, crouching down. 

He’d forgotten to turn the light on, like an idiot, he’d forgotten to turn the light on, and his good eye was too tired to make out any features and the sharingan wasn’t doing anything more than making him want to pass out and rapidly focusing on anything that might be a threat. The shape’s hands, the shape’s feet, the objects on the sink, the chord connecting the shower head to the wall, it was all dangerous. 

“Shit,” the shape whispers under its breath. Something about the sound is familiar. 

Despite assessing the threats around him, Kakashi can’t do anything more than lie there. He’s far too tired and stripped off all his weapons and pouches already. He was in every way exposed and vulnerable to whoever was in his home.

His mind provides the helpful information that by taking off all his weapon pouches he’d left the intruder more things to use against him. 

The small, rational part of his brain that’s left starts talking him off the cliff, saying this person hadn’t hurt him yet, was talking and moving slowly, as if trying not to spook a wild animal. 

In other words, they had experience with confused jounin. 

The person moves and abruptly, painfully, everything is lit up. 

Kakashi immediately closes the borrowed eye. He resists the urge to rub at the other one, blinking rapidly to adjust to the brighter room instead. 

“Better?”

Iruka. 

The name floods his mind and for one second all the aches lift, his mind clears, the shadows all blown away, as it hyper fixates on the way the strands of hair around Iruka’s shoulders brush against his t-shirt as he approaches Kakashi. 

He feels like he’s just stumbled through Konoha’s gates again, that quick rush of,  _ I made it _ . 

Somewhere along the lines, somewhere between the third and fourth chest he’d punched his fist through tonight, he’d forgotten his home. 

_ Better _ didn’t exactly seem right, not with the way everything was aching, but at least his mind wasn’t wading through the past any longer. 

Kakashi nods, slowly, trying to stop his eye from focusing solely on Iruka’s hands, but not quite able to shake the still overwhelming, base instinct to protect himself from any threats. 

This isn’t the first time he’s come home injured, certainly not the first time he’d done so with the ghosts of all his kills clinging to his skin like a cold sweat. 

It just felt a little heavier tonight, a little harder to wipe away, to shake free. 

Iruka seemed well aware of this, his movements smooth and slow, but not so much so that they might be confused for a skilled enemy ninja, body honed and trained for lethal, silent strikes. Anyone who moved the way Kakashi did all those years he wore a different sort of mask put him on edge. 

It was one thing to be a shinobi, they all knew how to fight, and they all knew how to kill. 

It was another thing to be  _ one of them _ . 

There was a difference between the icy, detached way an ANBU took out an enemy, as if the other body never belonged to anyone at all. 

Kakashi shivers against the side of the tub and Iruka steps closer, kneeling down beside him. He reaches his hand out, palm toward Kakashi, showing its obvious emptiness. 

When his skin makes contact with Kakashi’s, pushing back the soaked bangs that have fallen into his eyes, his still heightened senses catch a whiff of cinnamon and black tea. It reminds him of the dresser in their bedroom, where Iruka tied a bundle of dried cinnamon sticks up with a ribbon and shoved it to the back of the drawer. He said it would give them a nice smell. 

Kakashi didn’t mention how this conversation came just a week after Iruka had complained about the lingering stench of dried blood and sweat that never seemed to wash out of any of Kakashi’s clothes. 

_ I’ll just get new ones _ , he’d said.

_ Like how you’ll get new shoes?  _ Iruka had retorted. 

Kakashi did get new shirts quite often, preferring not to waste what little free time he had between missions sewing up holes, and his mind had been ready to list off all the advantages to keeping his worn in sandals, but Iruka had smiled and stuck the tip of his tongue out and Kakashi had swallowed all of his counter arguments. 

It was truly amazing how much power the other man had over him. 

The memory is grounding, bringing him a little closer to sanity, making his muscles unwind, his chest feel a tad less tight. 

He leans into Iruka’s touch when the pad of the other man’s thumb gently strokes over his cheek. 

A flash of that fuzzy memory from earlier floods his system again, but he still can’t tell what’s happening in it. He thinks there might have been cinnamon there as well, and with the way whoever had coaxed his eye closed, it was recorded by the sharingan. It was fact. 

Too quickly, Iruka’s hand is removed, and the gentle, hazy brush of the past goes with it. 

“The water is getting cold, Kakashi,” he says. Iruka’s eyes flicker down to his stomach, obviously taking note of the slash across it. “What hurts?”

_ What  _ ** _else_ ** _ hurts _ was the real question. What couldn’t Iruka see?

Kakashi shakes his head slowly. 

That was a hard question to answer. 

Right now, he wasn’t sure what was phantom pain and what was current. 

He’s definitely lost too much chakra, which makes his whole body buzz with a dull, throbbing pain, makes all his limbs feel sluggish and heavy, and makes it more difficult to decipher what other damage had been done. 

So all he manages is a groan. 

Iruka sighs and looks over the edge of the tub, his eyes grazing over Kakashi’s body. 

He’s too tired to care if he looks like a mess, too tired to make any teasing jokes. 

Iruka reaches out toward his abdomen and before Kakashi can even register a thought, he finds his own hand is gripping the other man’s wrist. 

“Shit, sorry, Kashi,” Iruka says, sounding a bit breathless, a bit shocked. 

Kakashi is surprised as well. 

He didn’t think he had enough energy left to move that quickly, but his body is in fight or flight mode and for as long as he’d had it, it had always chosen fight. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles out, clearing his throat afterward. He hadn’t realized until right now that it had been quite some time since he’d last spoken. This was a solo mission, as were most these days, all the jounin and chunin run thin with the akatsuki gaining momentum and Naruto god knows where with Jiraiya. 

He’d had a few sleepless nights over that recently, waking with a jolt, muscles tight, coiled and ready to strike, coming back from a world where he arrived too late, something he was already far too familiar with. 

His own words, whispered over an unconscious Naruto held in his arms, mocked him on the few nights he wasn’t able to pass out the moment he hit the sheets. 

_ Please forgive me.  _

The nightmares often mixed with reality, him sliding to a stop in a clearing, before spotting those black and red capes, the clouds seemingly swirling, moving slowly through the fabric. He’d look down between their feet to see Naruto’s body, chest unmoving, face lifeless, so very similar to how he’d found him in the Valley of the End. 

It was hard to shake those dreams, harder still to try and ignore the nagging guilt that lingered with him after. 

_ You should have trained them better. _

_ You shouldn’t have chosen favorites. _

_ You should have paid closer attention. _

_ You shouldn’t have taught him chidori. _

_ You shouldn’t have ignored her potential.  _

_ You shouldn’t have pushed him to Ebisu.  _

_ You shouldn’t have been so selfish. _

_ You shouldn’t have been so naive.  _

_ You should have stopped them. _

_ You should have saved them. _

_ You should have never passed them. _

_ You should have never been their sensei.  _

He inhales sharply through his teeth and it takes every last bit of his focus to uncurl his fingers from Iruka’s wrist. 

Immediately, his hand balls into a fist. He brings his arm behind his back along with the other, tucking them both away. While he’d thought he wasn’t getting any rest tonight, he now realizes he needs it, desperately.

“I’m going to try and clean this up, alright?” Iruka asks, nodding his head toward Kakashi’s stomach wound. 

Kakashi blinks. It’s all he can manage. 

“I’m turning off the water,” Iruka states. 

Again, Kakashi doesn’t react, but that was the point. Iruka was doing all the things they were trained to do, no matter your rank, when you were faced with any ninja whose mental capacities had been compromised. 

Talk slowly and clearly, state your actions before you do them, always let them see your hands, no sudden movements, never turn your back to them, do not grab any objects, always stay in their line of vision, the list went on. 

Iruka had only had to play this role a handful of times before now and Kakashi hated himself a little more each time it happened. 

He wanted to stop coming home like this. 

He didn’t want Iruka to see him in this state, to have to treat him like this, to be reminded that Kakashi was sometimes more weapon than man. 

He’s still mostly unfocused, didn’t even notice when Iruka had grabbed the first aid supplies, or when he’d started wiping away the dried blood and fluid from Kakashi’s stomach. The soft touch makes his chest tighten. 

He had so many bad memories.

This night was proof enough of that. 

They overwhelmed him, clung to him like a second skin. 

He didn’t want Iruka to have them too. 

He’d made it to his new apartment, but somehow forgot that he’d moved to a larger one to fit another person in it. 

He watches intently as Iruka continues cleaning up his wound, using butterfly tape to close the cut as much as possible, and all the while his brain keeps mulling over that one foggy moment, that thumb over his eye, that blurred figure coming closer, he hears something mumbled beside his ear, but he can’t reach it, can’t make it out. 

Just like he hadn’t been able to make out Iruka’s form in the bathroom, or recognize his voice when he’d called out to him tonight. 

This wasn’t the first time he’d lost himself, it certainly wouldn’t be the last, but it was the first time he’d lost Iruka. 

His nails dig into his arms where he’s holding them tight behind his back. 

“Almost done,” Iruka says. His voice is so steady, so sure. He sounds completely unfazed by what he’s seeing.

Kakashi knows it’s what they’re trained to do, but it makes his throat tighten all the same. 

He doesn’t want Iruka to be jaded, to get used to seeing this. 

He doesn’t want Iruka to be like him. 

He bites the inside of his cheek. 

Iruka dabs away the dampness from around the cut before placing a pad of gauze overtop of it and taping it down. 

“We’ll get this properly fixed up tomorrow,” Iruka says and Kakashi swallows the lump taking up the majority of his throat. 

Iruka knew when not to force him, when he’d had enough, never pushed him more than he could take, never asked more than he could give. 

“How is your collar and ribs? Can you feel them?” Iruka asks, prodding feather light at the skin around the bruising. 

Kakashi frowns. 

“Alright…”

“Nothing that can’t wait?” Iruka asks, but this time his eyes narrow, his face more serious. He’s challenging Kakashi, letting him know he needs a serious answer, no lies. 

Kakashi nods. “It’s fine.”

“Then let’s get you to bed, yeah?” Iruka says, standing up slowly. He’s still being cautious and it makes Kakashi’s eye burn. 

Iruka steps closer to him, saying, “I’m going to help lift you up, alright?” 

Everything is a question, all an opportunity for Kakashi to say  _ no _ . 

Everything was a choice, an option, all the things Kakashi never got to have outside the tall walls of the village. 

_ There is only the mission.  _

He lets out a short gasp at that memory, his own words, much younger, spat back at him with a harsh clarity. 

Iruka pauses. 

Kakashi takes a deep breath and closes his eye, says, “Sorry. I’m alright.”

He’s very much not, but he hears Iruka get closer anyway. Kakashi opens his eye again and lifts his arms enough for Iruka to gets his underneath and help hoist Kakashi up and out of the tub. It’s a fumbling, awkward situation, and Kakashi nearly trips over the edge, but Iruka holds him tight against his own body until they’re both standing. Iruka’s arms remain around him, not yet moving, waiting for the shaking in Kakashi’s knees to calm down a little before they begin the short, but incredibly long trek across the hallway. 

Iruka’s hand is a welcome pressure on his lower back, his arm thrown across the back of the chunin’s shoulders, wrist held firmly, but not enough to cause alarm, in Iruka’s other hand. Kakashi’s whole body feels like it hardly belongs to him anymore, but the constant heat radiating from these two points of contact keep him under control. 

He knows Iruka runs warmer than he does, but certainly not  _ this _ much so, not usually. 

Kakashi wants to feel this heat pressed along the length of his back, around his chest, tucked under the backs of his thighs, intertwined with his legs and feet. It’s this thought, now, that overpowers all others, makes each sliding, grueling scuff of his feet against the carpet worth it. 

Just to lie in bed with Iruka, to feel…

_ Ibs ohu ka ee I wee all wwieatt ee lul bee hee ruh  _

Kakashi shakes his head and the room spins, Iruka’s grip tightening, holding him up as some far away echo reverberates in his skull. 

The voice doesn’t make any sense, just a bunch of consonants and vowel sounds all piled together in an indistinguishable mess. 

He knows, though, even with the memory coming as nothing but darkness now, that it’s that same person, the owner of the soft touch and radiant, peaceful aura. 

_ What is this? Who are you? _

He lifts a hand to his head, rubbing at his scarred eye in frustration. 

He had no real recollection of this particular incident, so why did it keep coming back?

Iruka takes a step forward, continuing on, and practically dragging Kakashi through the door at this point. Kakashi is fine with it, happy to be lead anywhere, happy to have his control stripped away. 

This night felt like it was chipping away at him, all the little pieces of his sanity scattered in a trail from the bathroom to the bedroom. 

Iruka guides him onto their shared bed, the light from the window above it shining down across the sheets. He helps Kakashi sit down, his fingers lingering longer than necessary, grazing across Kakashi’s forearms before slipping away, as if savoring each miniscule moment of connection. Kakashi briefly thinks Iruka is acting more starved than he is, despite Kakashi only having been gone for about a week. 

The other man moves to the dresser, pulling out a pair of sweatpants, before walking back over and kneeling down in front of Kakashi. He’s stopped voicing his actions, which makes Kakashi feel a little better. Apparently he was acting calmer, less like a crazed killer ready to strike and more like a fatigued, worn shinobi ready for rest. 

He lifts up enough for Iruka to help him get the pants over his waist and this act alone leaves him a bit winded. 

Chakra depletion was an infuriating condition. 

He flops back onto the bed, tired of sitting up, tired of being awake, tired of the nagging, disorienting memories, tired of the weighted feeling building continuously in the center of his chest. He couldn’t let his eye close yet, though, not without Iruka in bed as well. He’d never be able to drift off into whatever hellscape he was sure his mind was cooking up for him tonight with someone walking around. He frowns at the ceiling. 

His eye shifts to Iruka’s back, watching him as he throws Kakashi’s soiled clothing into the hamper they’d specifically designated for mission wear. 

He swallows, and it feels so loud in his ears he thinks it’s impossible for the other man not to have heard it. His chest feels uncomfortably tight. 

He turns toward the window, unable to look at Iruka any longer, unable to think about whatever staring at his partner was causing his throat to do. 

For one second, this works. His thoughts return to their blank state, just taking in his surroundings.

Then, he sees his plant, Mr. Ukki, the one Naruto had gifted him some time ago as a joke, claiming there was no way Kakashi would ever be able to keep it alive. 

He had, at first out of spite, and then out of a fondness for it. 

Now, his eye widens, staring at the plant, several leaves fallen off, shriveled up and lying in the dried, cracked soil. 

It was dying. 

Kakashi’s mouth feels dry. Suddenly, he can’t breathe. 

He can’t stop staring at it, at the weak stalk, at the way it bends, as if the few remaining leaves were far too heavy for it to bear. 

“Kakashi?” 

He turns his head toward the voice, his mouth still agape, and his eye still wide. 

“Are you alright?”

He’s crying. 

He feels the wet tracks slipping down the side of his face and onto the mattress. 

“My plant…” is all he manages to get out. 

Iruka’s gaze shifts from Kakashi to the plant and then back again. He looks confused and Kakashi knows he has every right to be, that it’s just a plant, that to him this means nothing, but to Kakashi…

“It’s alright,” Iruka says. “I’ll get some water, I’ll-”

“I should have-” Kakashi gasps out. He bites his lip, and then starts again. “Naruto is...the akatsuki…” he was saying words he wasn’t supposed to. Iruka wasn’t allowed to know about the akatsuki, not yet, anyway. 

Kakashi always feared before too long, the whole village would know about the red clouds and black capes, the taunting, unhinged stare of its members. 

“I’m not...I can’t…” he doesn’t know what he’s trying to say, what his mind is grasping at so desperately. All he knows is that his plant’s death is making all the air feel solid, like there’s no way he could possibly breathe it in. 

He wants to explain to Iruka’s panicked face, wants to tell his furrowed brow that he knows it’s just a plant, some part of him still knows that, but that part had been tied up and gagged so much earlier in the evening. That part couldn’t help him now. 

Now it was just him and all his failures, lined up one by one, stretching miles long.

It was Naruto and Sasuke and Sakura, in the only end he could ever imagine anymore, all dead, all lying in a clearing somewhere, all the surrounding trees blown to bits from their fighting. While he is standing over all their corpses, knowing what he always knew but refused to acknowledge. 

He would always be powerless to stop them. 

It was the akatsuki getting exactly what they wanted, all the tailed beasts in their possession, doing god knows what with all that raw power. Kakashi’s mind is only able to conjure up images of the village’s destruction that are alarmingly similar to the Kyuubi attack all those years ago. 

It was crawling his way back to the memorial stone like a dog that you just can’t put down, begging Obito and Rin and Minato and Sarutobi and countless others for forgiveness, telling them over and over the one thing that he could never truly get out of his mind.

At this point, the words felt like a part of him, like his one real truth, the only thing he had to ground him when everything else was slipping away:

_ It should have been you. _

Any one of them could have done a better job. Any one of them could have made better choices, better decisions. 

Any one of them could have stopped Sasuke before Orochimaru tempted him with endless power.

Any one of them could have supported Naruto, could have pushed Sakura’s growth, wouldn’t have ignored them under some false pretense of  _ too many missions. _

He had time. He could have quit.

He drowned himself in ANBU until the sandaime forced him to resign and he never took a bit of blame for the countless hours and lives lost in the black ops, just reaped the benefits of the sandaime’s pity, all the while knowing that he’d been avoiding it.

Not just his students, but Gai, Kurenai, Asuma, Tenzo, every single person who tried desperately to reach him. 

He used the fighting as an excuse to keep them farther than arm’s length. 

Not because he was strong, but because he was weak. 

There were things he could not lose, not again. 

Kakashi’s sobs pick up as he watches Iruka, watches the shadow of the leaves from the tree outside their bedroom dance across his scar. 

His hands grip the sheets, ball into fists.

He’d spent a lifetime keeping his distance, under the false pretense of protecting the ones he loved.

All the while, making sure he was impossible to love in return. 

Iruka begins walking toward him, his movements still slow, but far less measured, more stilted and jerky, as if he wants nothing more than to run at Kakashi, as if it’s taking everything he has to keep his control. Each step he takes looks like the start of a sprint halted and Kakashi knows too well how that feels.

Somehow, impossibly, his plan had failed.

Like so much else, somewhere, he’d made a mistake. 

Iruka had slipped in. 

There were so many times where he’d wanted to run at the other man too, so many instances where he’d held back, stopped himself, constantly pushing Iruka away. 

For each advance from the teacher, he’d pulled further back, but the other man had been relentless with his kindness, his perseverance, his patience. 

For all of Kakashi’s doubts, Iruka had answered him, confident, assured,  _ you’re wrong. _

When Iruka reaches him, the first thing he does is bring his hand to Kakashi’s face, thumb rubbing underneath his eye, over the long vertical scar there, taking several fat tears with it. Then, in a movement that startles Kakashi, the thumb moves to his eyebrow, and then down further, softly brushing along his eyelid, coaxing the sharingan closed when Kakashi didn’t even know it was opened. 

Abruptly, it comes back. 

Clear, crisp, as Kakashi’s mind untethers from the present, he finally sees it. 

He sees the hospital walls, the drawn privacy curtain rustling with a gentle breeze. He sees Tsunade, and behind her, farther away, Sakura, both looking exhausted, but relieved. He can’t feel anything at all. His whole body is numb. For the first time in his life, he feels weightless. 

Then he sees them, the blurred figure, in crystal clarity. 

It’s Iruka. 

Of course it is. 

Who else had ever waited for him?

_ Fool _ . 

Kakashi doesn’t recognize the voice, though it sounds vaguely like his own, but more certain in a way he has never been. 

On its coattails comes a flood of memories, swirling together, one after another, flooding his mind, filling the long repetitive gaps of empty chairs and bedside tables. He’s always in the same spot, the same room, but there are other people there. Naruto, Sakura, Sasuke, Tenzo, Kurenai, Asuma, Jiraiya, Gai, Tsunade, Shizune, Anko, Genma,  Yūgao , all coming in and out of his hospital room, some chatting for hours as he drifts in and out of consciousness, some bickering among themselves, some playing cards, some bringing gifts, some challenging him to duels when he’s feeling well again, some telling him to stop showing up here at inconvenient hours. 

When?

When had things changed?

Then he’s back in the floating body with Iruka leaning over him, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. 

_ No, it had always been like this. _

Even as a child, his team had been there. Minato had been there. His classmates had been there. 

Iruka. 

Iruka had been there. 

More than anyone else, before anyone else. 

Over and over. 

There were periods of vacancy, when his visitors died or they’d been too busy with training or missions of their own. 

There were times when he pushed his friends away and they stopped fighting back.

_ If you want so badly to be alone, then fine, be alone! _

Iruka never backed down.

Iruka always came.

Iruka always stayed.

First, out of nothing more than obligation, as he volunteered to deliver flowers to injured shinobi, mistakenly bringing a small vase to Kakashi’s room that was surely meant for someone else. Then, somewhere along the lines, out of friendship, continuing conversations left off at the mission desk or in the market after bumping into one another.

Then, sometime after walks turned into leaning against the bridge railing and talking until the sunset, until that turned into dinners out and dinners in, and that turned into checking the sign in book for the others name, turned into small gifts left on a teacher’s podium, then…

Then, it was out of love. 

Love, he’d spent a great deal of his life guarding against it. 

It wasn’t until Iruka entered his life that he’d realized. 

_ You’re a fool, Hatake.  _

Love was the one thing that kept him going. Love was the one thing that bound them all together, the thing that made him stronger than all the enemies he faced. 

Love was what made people come back, every time he shoved them away.

Love was what made him buy them a skewer of dango or a cup of tea, still unable to shake off the tendencies of the proud child he once was and apologize properly.

He wanted to protect Konoha because he loved it. 

He wanted to believe in Naruto, in his dream to bring back Sasuke, to repair what had been lost, because he loved his students.

He played Gai’s games, every challenge, every eating competition, every duel because no matter how many times he may tell them to leave him alone, he loved his friends. 

Kakashi closes his eye as Iruka’s thumb ghosts over it, the other still silently letting out a stream of tears. He stares up at Iruka’s chestnut eyes, at all the little strands of hair falling around his face. 

He fights to come home because he wants to, because for a long time home used to feel like a holding area, a place to recharge before starting it all over again, but now…

Kakashi closes his other eye, lets his mind fall back into that hospital room, back to Iruka’s touch from all those months ago. Iruka leaned in close, his lips beside Kakashi’s ear, and all those garbled words come out clear. 

_ It’s okay. I will wait. I’ll be here. _

At the time, it probably seemed like he was telling Kakashi to rest, to heal, but he knew better. 

He breathes in, let’s himself fall, plummet backwards into the memory, no longer resisting, no longer fighting.

He gives himself over to it the same way he gave in to Iruka. 

He remembers. 

The rest of the words, something he’d ignorantly let himself forget, block out, perhaps unready at the time to really take them in. 

_ “Take your time, Kakashi, as much as you need. When you’re ready, when you come back, I’ll be here. I’ll be waiting.” _

Iruka had turned his head, placing his lips delicately against Kakashi’s then feverish, clammy skin, and said the words no one in Kakashi’s life had ever been able to keep:

_ “I will never leave you.” _

They always did. 

Now, staring up at Iruka, his unwavering strength, no fear, no insecurity, no doubt in his eyes, Kakashi thinks the other man might just break the mold.

For perhaps the first time since before his father’s death, he felt safe. 

For the first time, he felt like he could take it back, all the shattered pieces of himself, scattered across countless battlefields, all the ghosts pulling at his ankles, all the blood staining his skin, all the death and destruction and loss and betrayal and violence, he could take it back.

He could reclaim what been taken from him, finally, after all these years. 

Love. 

Love was the motivating factor behind his every decision, his every move. 

In the heat of every battle, all he was thinking, always, was  _ how do I get back to you? _

Iruka’s lips purse, as if about to ask a question, but Kakashi has all the answers he needs. He pushes himself up off the mattress in a too-swift movement that leaves Iruka jerking backwards, but Kakashi’s hand is still quick, grabbing the other man’s shirt, pulling him forward, crashing their lips together in a kiss that he hopes means just as much to Iruka as it does to him. 

In a kiss that says,  _ you are everything I never knew I needed.  _

In a kiss that says,  _ I will never leave you.  _

In a kiss that says,  _ I will always come back to you. _

In a kiss that says,  _ I love you. _

_ I have always loved you. _

_ I will always love you.  _

Kakashi falls back against the bed with a smile on his face and is thankful for Iruka’s returning one, for the dimples in his cheeks. 

He thinks,  _ thank you.  _

For proving him wrong. 

For taking all the little happy memories he’d long since tossed away and dusting them off, placing them back in the present, back where Kakashi could find them when he needed them the most. 

On nights like this. 

When he felt invincible, untouchable. 

Terrified.

Petrified. 

Horrified. 

Barely human. 

Until he came home. 

Until he saw Iruka’s face. 

Until he felt the other man’s warm, unending love. 

He felt whole again.

He felt like himself again.

He felt human again. 

Kakashi reaches out and Iruka leans in, carefully entering Kakashi’s arms, keeping his weight off of Kakashi’s injured chest. 

“I love you,” Kakashi whispers into Iruka’s ear. 

“I love you too,” Iruka answers.

Then, turning his face so he can briefly press his lips to Kakashi’s cheek, he says, “Welcome back.”

“Good to be back,” Kakashi laughs. 


End file.
